Allegis Capital Adds Four Venture Partners

Responding to the increased complexity of cyber security investing, Allegis Capital has added four venture partners.

The move is a significant expansion of a team that includes four investing partners, a chief financial officer and current Venture Partner Jean-Louis Gassee.

“What the addition of venture partners really signals is growing complexity,” said firm founder and Managing Director Robert Ackerman.

The new additions are:

Nawaf Bitar, a senior vice president and general manager of the security business unit at Juniper Networks and a former senior vice president of engineering at IronPort Systems, an Allegis portfolio company;

Hossein Eslambolchi, founder and CEO of CyberFlow Analytics, a cyber security analytics company, and a former global chief technology officer at AT&T;

Tom Gillis, the co-founder and CEO of a security-focused software company in stealth mode and a former vice president and general manager at Cisco Systems’ security technology group; and

Jeffrey Williams, a vice president of worldwide sales and business development at FireEye Inc., which filed last week to go public, and a former vice president of sales at IronPort.

Each will offer strategic advice to the firm on the security landscape, investing opportunities and innovation. They also will provide deal flow, assist with due diligence and work with portfolio companies.

Complexity in online security investing has increased, especially when it comes to scaling technology, says Ackerman. Formalizing long running relationships with each of the new additions was a logical move, he said.

Earlier this year, Allegis said it was raising a Special Opportunities Fund. It did not disclose the size of the fund.

3 Comments

Definitely, we’ve seen Allegis and other investors paying more attention to security deals in a big way, with large rounds by Cylance and FireEye. No surprise why since companies are working hard to defend their networks as more employees bring their own devices to work. It will be interesting to see what happens to the current crop of security companies–if they can exit or consolidate.